Research Proposal, 2016

Part I of Survey- Protocol
Procedures:
Participants will be directed in recruitment materials to the PsychData survey website where they will 
first be provided with an informed consent form outlining the anonymous nature of participation. 
Once participants indicate informed consent, they will begin the survey. Some parts of the survey will 
be common to all participants, while others will be given only to those who identify as of a particular 
race (e.g. the Asian American Race Related Stress Inventory).
In the beginning of the survey, after obtaining informed consent, participants will be asked to self-identify 
their race; this will determine the measures that will be administered to that particular participant. 
Participants who indicate that they are multiracial with multiple minority identities will be administered 
shared measures as well as race-specific measures for any of their identified races.
In order to establish test retest reliability for the Racism Empowerment and Resistance scale (REAR) 
which is being piloted through this study, up to 250 participants will be contacted 2 weeks after initial 
participation is completed to retake the REAR (see Part II of study- Test-Retest Protocol section).
At the end of the survey, participants who are not Psychology subject pool participants will be asked if
they would be interested in being entered into a drawing for one of several $200 gift cards. If 
participants indicate that they would be interested in either of the above, they will be asked to provide 
an email address for the researcher to contact them should they be the person selected to receive a gift 
card. Alternatively, participants can elect to have the researchers make a $5 donation to the Southern 
Poverty Law Center, an organization dedicated to supporting social justice and racial equity through 
advocacy and education (up to a total of $2000 total). Those who retake the REAR to establish test 
retest reliability will be given $10 in exchange for participation. Participants who are eligible for 
course credit through the psychology subject pool will receive appropriate course credit according to 
the rules of the Psychology department for course credit in exchange for research participation.
Measures:
A complete packet of quantitative measures including instructions is included in Appendix B.
Quantitative measures common to all groups include:
Measures of Racism
Multiple measures of racism are being given to participants in order to examine how the different 
aspects of racism experiences captured by each of these scales may relate to differences in mental 
health, coping, or empowerment. More traditional forms of overt racism are captured by the GED, 
subtle forms of everyday racism like microaggressions are captured by the RMAS, while the CoBRAS
captures systemic indirect racism reflected in color blind ideology.
1. The Color Blind Racial Attitudes Scale (CoBRAS; Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, & Browne, 2000). 
The CoBRAS was designed to assess cognitive aspects of color-blind racial attitudes and provides 
a general measure of awareness of more structural and systemic aspects of race and racism. Chen 
et al. (2003) found that the CoBRAS contributed to clarifying interpretation of cluster analyses of 
the People of Color Racial Identity Attitude Scale (PoCRIAS) by clarifying participants’ attitudes 
towards race as opposed to ethnicity. Initial construction of the CoBRAS included establishing 
construct, concurrent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity (Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, & 
Browne, 2000).The CoBRAS has shown good internal reliability for the three subscales and 
overall (Racial Privilege, .78, Institutional Discrimination, .76, Blatant Racial Issues, .72 and an 
overall reliability of .87) on a mixed sample of Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and 
American Indians (Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, & Browne, 2000). The CoBRAS has also been 
slightly modified for this study to make a clearer distinction between race and ethnicity (e.g. ethnic
terms and examples such as “Italian American” have been deleted or changed to clearly reference 
racialized groupings). 
2.
The Racial Microaggression Scale (RMAS; Torres-Harding, Andrade, & Diaz, 2012): The RMAS
measures perceptions of racial microaggressions experienced by people of color. The authors use 
Sue et al.’s (2007) definition of racial microaggressions as “brief and commonplace daily verbal, 
behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate 
hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group.” There are six 
subscales: 1) foreigner/not belonging; 2) criminality/assumption of criminal status; 3) 
sexualization/exoticized; 4) low achieving/undesirable culture; 5) invisibility; 6) environmental. The 
RMAS illustrated very good internal consistency for the aforementioned subscales for a sample of 
African Americans, Latinos, multiracial people of color, Asian American, South Asian, and Middle 
Eastern (.78, .85, .83, .87, .89, .81 respectively, Torres-Harding, Andrade, & Diaz, 2012). The scale 
also showed good convergent and concurrent validity. 
3. A short questionnaire constructed for this study inquiring about emotional response to experiences
of racism 
4. A single question from The General Ethnic Discrimination Scale (GEDS; Landrine, Klonoff, 
Corral, Fernandez, Roesch, 2006) about how much one’s life would be different if the participant 
had not experienced racism. In order to minimize subject burden, we are only using this one 
question from the GED that examines the impact of racism on the participant’s life, as the majority
of other questions overlap with other measures. This one question is scored separately from the rest
of the measure in its original construction: 
Group specific racism and values measures
In addition to the racism measures above, group-specific racism measures are also included when 
they exist and are widely used, to examine aspects of racism previously shown to be unique to 
specific racialized groups (e.g. Asian Americans or African Americans; see group specific section at 
end of Measures). We are also including short measures of group-specific values or identity measures,
to examine the ways that ethnicity and cultural affiliation may affect the relation of racism and mental
health.
Asian American specific measures
The Asian American Values Scale (AAVS; Kim, Li & Ng, 2005): The AAVS-M measures Asian 
American specific values enculturation (in juxtaposition to European Americans). It is a 42 item scale 
divided into five subscales: 1) collectivism; 2) conformity to norms; 3) emotional self-control; 4) 
family recognition through achievement; 5) humility. There was good test-retest reliability. Internal 
reliability for each of the subscales were .89, .80, .79, .80. .90, and .81, 
respectively for a sample of Chinese, Koreans, Asian Indians, Filipinos, Taiwanese, Japanese,
Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Pakistani, Indonesian, and multiracials (Kim, Li & Ng, 
2005). Kim et al. reported evidence of AAVS total scores’ internal consistency, test-retest 
reliability, concurrent validity, and discriminant validity.” (Kim, Li & Ng, 2005)

The Asian American Race Related Stress Inventory (AARRSI; Li, Liang, & Kim, 2001): The 
AARRSI is a measure of Asian-Americans’ racism-related stress that was developed and 
psychometrically tested with Asian American adults. Consisting of 29 items, it is comprised of 
three subscales: 1) Socio-historical racism; 2) General racism; 3) Perpetual foreigner racism. 
All three scales have shown good construct validity as well as very good internal reliability for 
both the aforementioned subscales and the overall measure (.93, .86, .84, .95 respectively) for a
sample of Koreans, Chinese, Asian Indians, Japanese, Laotians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Hmong,
Taiwanese, Thai, Indonesian, multiethnic Asians, and other unspecified Asian ethnicities 
(Liang, & Kim, 2001). 
Black American specific Measures

Index of Race-Related Stress - Brief Version (IRRS-B; Utsey, 1999): The IRRS-B is a short
form of the Index of Race-Related Stress. It is a multidimensional scale designed to 
measure the stress experienced by Black Americans as a result of experiences of racism. 
The IRRS-B consists of 22 items, which measure stress in response to three dimensions of 
racism: cultural racism, institutional racism, and individual racism. Utsey (1999) reported 
that the internal consistencies for the three dimensions were α = .78, α = .69, and α = .78, 
respectively. 

Three  questions  were  constructed  for  this  study  to  better  understand  how  Black
participants describe and experience ethnic culture: 
o Ethnicity or ethnic culture refers to patterns of ideas and practices associated with a
group of people sharing a common history, geographic background, and/or 
language. It is different than race, but also related. There can be several ethnicities 
within a race: for example, recent immigrants from Haiti, Jamaica, and Sudan are 
racially "Black," as are African Americans who have been here for many 
generations and are descended from slaves. Alternatively, someone who is racially 
Black may be culturally American, Italian, English, etc. Ethnic culture includes 
things like values, patterns of interacting, gender roles, food, dress, holidays, or 
ways of seeing the world, yourself, or other people. In your own words, what 
values, patterns of interacting, gender roles, food, dress, holidays, ways of 
seeing the world, yourself or other people, etc. are part of your ethnic culture?
o Some people feel that there are cultural aspects shared by all people within a 
racialized group, i.e. that all people with ancestors from Africa (people from the 
African diaspora) share some cultural aspects, regardless of whether they are 
recently from a specific African country, distantly from Africa and recently from the
Caribbean, or distantly from Africa with many generations in the U.S. descended 
from slaves. Do you think this is true? 
o If so, what aspects of your cultural experience are common to all peoples from the 
African diaspora and what aspects may be unique to a more specific ethnic culture? 
Latino Specific Measures
Latino/a Values Scale (Kim, Soliz, & Orellana, 2009): The Latino/a Values Scale measures the
level of adherence to Latino/a cultural norms an individual possesses. It is a 35 item scale 
divided into four subscales: 1) cultural pride; 2) simpatía; 3) familismo; 4) espiritsmo. There
was good test-retest reliability. Internal reliability for each of the subscales were .85, .46, .68, 
and .50, respectively for a sample of Mexican/ Chicana/o, multiethnic, Guatemalan,
Salvadoran, Bolivian, Cuban, and “other” (Kim, Soliz & Orellana, 2009).
Measures of Mental Health
Multiple measures of mental health are being given in this study to capture the relations of 
experiencing racism on various aspects of mental health, including depressive and anxious 
symptomatology (captured by the DASS-21), fear of negative evaluation—which is an anxiety 
related measure particularly related to social interactions, and one’s self-esteem as a member of a 
particular racial group. We are also administering a PTSD measure, as racism has been 
conceptualized as, itself, a traumatic event relating to mental health challenges.
1.
The Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale-Revised (BFNE-Revised; Carleton, McCreary, Norton,
& Asmundson, 2006). This is a shortened version of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale. Internal 
consistency yielded an alpha coefficient of .95 overall in a sample of White European Americans 
and Asian Americans (Carleton, McCreary, Norton, & Asmundson, 2006). 
2.
The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale—21 (DASS-21; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). This is an 
updated, abbreviated version of the original 42-item measure (now 21 items). The three subscales are
1) depression; 2) anxiety; 3) stress. Internal reliability for each of the subscales were .94, .87, 
.87, respectively on a mixed sample of White European Americans, Hispanic Americans, African 
Americans, Asian Americans, and “other ethnic racial groups” (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995). 
3. The Collective Self-Esteem Scale. The CSE measures individuals’ evaluations of their collective 
esteem and sense of membership in particular groups (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). There are four 
subscales: membership esteem, private CSE, public CSE, and importance to identity. The CSE 
shows concurrent validity through correlations with a higher sense of collectivism and collective 
aspects of identity (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992). Internal consistency coefficients range from .85 to 
.88 for the CSE in a mixed undergraduate sample (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992) and .73 for the total 
CSE with an Asian American undergraduate sample (Alvarez & Helms, 2001) It has been modified so 
that the language specifically relates to racial groups (e.g. “my social group” has become “the Asian 
American group,” “the Black American group,” “the Latina/o group,” or “the Native 
American group”). 
4. PTSD Checklist Civilian version (Norris & Hamblen, 2003). The PTSD Checklist, Civilian 
Version. The PCL is a 17-item self-report measure that corresponds to the DSM-IV symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The PCL-C, the version used in this study, is anchored to 
generic “stressful life experiences” and can be used with any population (Norris & Hamblen, 
2003). Developed by the National Center for PTSD for the public domain, the PCL has
shown good validity and reliability across all three versions. 
Coping and Empowerment Measures
1.
Brief Cope (Carver, 1997) is an abbreviated version of the Cope Scale which is designed to assess 
coping strategies. There are fourteen subscales: 1) self-distraction; 2) active coping; 3) denial; 4) 
substance use; 5) use of emotional support; 6) use of instrumental support; 7) behavioral 
disengagement; 8) venting; 9) positive reframing; 10) planning; 11) humor; 12) acceptance; 13) 
religion; 14) self-blame. Internal consistency for each of the subscales were .68, .73, .64, .57, .73, 
.82, .71, .64, .71, .54, .50, .90, .65, .69, respectively for a sample of non-Hispanic Whites, African
Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans (Carver, 1997). 
Racism Empowerment and Resistance (REAR): A series of 50 items developed for this study using a 
consensual qualitative research approach (Hill, 2012). This scale was developed by the PIs and
their associated research teams. Initial item generation involved extensive discussion of the meaning of 
“empowerment” and “resistance” as related to addressing racism, review of the one dissertation in 
psychology related to directly measuring race related empowerment (Stovall, 1999), and discussion of 
various aspects of empowerment. Following this discussion, 8 team members contributed at least 10 items 
on domains that they considered to be related to racism related resistance or empowerment. Items focused 
on different aspects of empowerment like internal and interpersonal empowerment, empowerment in 
thought, behavior and affect, direct action against discrimination versus indirect action. All items provided 
by team members were combined into a list. The initial list consisted of 119 items. Through an iterative 
process of discussion and consensus building, items were integrated, removed, reworded, changed or 
retained. The group also discussed nuances of differentiating aspects of empowerment and settled on the 
following domains of empowerment/resisting racism: Resisting through education, arts and media, 
organizing and protesting, acknowledging and resisting internalizing and social support and challenge.
Demographics Questionnaire
The UMass Boston comprehensive demographics questionnaire (Suyemoto, Roemer, Erisman, 
Holowka, Fuchs, & Barrett-Model, 2012) was developed with the goal of capturing the complexity 
within various identities that participants possess. This scale is useful to describe participants in terms 
of their identities and see how these descriptions may be related to their responses in research. It was 
also designed with an ethics of care (Haverkamp, 2005) for participants, aiming to support 
participants’ experience of having their multiple identities and contexts acknowledged as part of the 
research process. The questionnaire offers both open ended and close ended questions which cover 
domains like age, educational qualifications, household income etc which are commonly found in 
most demographic questionnaires. In addition, this scale provides a chance to obtain more nuanced 
information about self identification of race and ethnicity as well as others’ perception of the 
participants’ race, acculturation and cultural affiliation, aspects of racial socialization like 
neighborhood racial composition, as well as educational qualifications and professions of primary and 
secondary caregiver for the participants when growing up, which are commonly used as measures of 
social class previously related to experiences of racism.
Part II of Survey- Test-Retest Protocol
Procedures:
Up to 250 participants who answered “yes” on the following question, “Would you be interested in 
completing a shorter related survey as a follow-up in two to three weeks? If so, you will be provided 
with a $10 gift card to amazon.com or the opportunity to donate your portion to a social justice 
organization following your completion” will receive an invitation to participate in Part II of the study
(see Appendix D1 & D2 for sample e-mail). In order to match the answers from their initial survey, 
each participant will be sent a unique link to complete the follow-up survey that will allow the 
researchers the ability to connect responses from the initial survey with the follow-up survey to 
conduct test-retest reliability analyses.
Two to three weeks has been determined as the appropriate test-retest interval based on a literature 
review of similar scales (e.g., Liang, Li & Kim, 2004; Torres-Harding, Andrade & Romero Diaz, 2012;
Wei, Alvarez, Ku, Russell & Bonett, 2010). We also aim to recruit an equal number of participants 
from each of the 5 major racial groups (Black, Asian, Native American, Latina/o, multiracial) in an 
effort to determine the reliability and validity of the measure for each racial group.
Participants will be asked to read the consent form (Appendix C) and indicate whether they agree and 
wish to proceed or do not agree or do not wish to proceed. Those who provide consent and wish to 
proceed will be given the scales listed below. The DASS-21, CSE, RMAS, and Brief COPE aim to 
recreate similar conditions to the first survey. The REAR is the scale for which we are trying to 
establish retest reliability. We have also added a few open ended questions in order to contribute to our
understanding and the impact of the research study overall.
Measures:
●
(1) Measure of mental health: Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) 
●
(2) Measures of experiences of racism: Collective Self Esteemed Scale (CSE), and Racial
Microaggression Scale (RMAS) 
●
(3) Measures of Resistance/Empowerment: Brief COPE and Racism Empowerment
and Resistance (REAR) 
●
(4) Open-ended questions: the purpose of these questions is to deepen our understanding of 
the lived experiences of our participants that may not be captured by our existing scales. We 
will ask the following: 
▪
People engage in a range of activities to reduce, resist, or interrupt racial discrimination. 
Within “racial discrimination” we include not only major actions like name calling or 
physical harassment, but also indirect or less extreme activities such as making 
stereotypical assumptions or exclusions based on race. Discrimination can be 
intentional or unintentional. With this in mind, have you ever responded to racial 
discrimination in a way that deliberately intended to reduce, resist, or interrupt racial 
discrimination against you or your own racial group? We are interested in whether you
have actively tried to respond in a way that reduced, resisted, or interrupted, 
regardless of whether it was effective or not. Remember, there is no “right” answer. 
▪
If yes: 
●
(1) Please tell us about a specific time when you experienced racial 
discrimination and reacted in a way that tried to reduce, resist, or interrupt 
the discrimination. What happened and what did you do? 
●
(2) How did you hope to reduce, resist, or interrupt the discrimination through 
the response you described? Why did you anticipate that the reaction you 
described above would work to reduce/resist/interrupt racial discrimination? 
●
(3) What barriers or supports do you encounter when trying to respond to 
discrimination in ways that reduce/resist/interrupt racial discrimination 
against you or your own racial group? How do these affect you? 
▪
If no: 
●
(1)  Please  tell  us  how  you  define  reducing/resisting/interrupting
racial discrimination. 
●
(2) How do you respond to racial discrimination? 
●
(3) What influences your decision about how and/or when to respond?